A Memorial Of Paper

Some 30 million documents in the Archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) provide information on the fates of victims of Nazi persecution. Since 2013, the original collections are part of the UNESCO-“Memory of the WORLD”. The documents in the ITS archives concentrate on three central topics: incarceration, forced labor, and the liberated survivors.

Information on incarceration is found in the collection of documents from concentration camps and extermination camps, ghettos and Gestapo prisons. Registry cards and minutely detailed labor books, among others, provide information on the fates of the forced laborers. Another extensive collection is that of the documents on the liberated survivors, who were referred to as Displaced Persons by the Allies. With the help of these documents, the work of the Allies immediately following the end of the war can be traced, as well as that of the predecessor institutions to the ITS. From this work the Central Name Index was created, containing some 50 million reference cards on the fates of 17.5 million people. Like the ITS original collections, the Central Name Index is also registered on the “Memory of the World”.

The diversity and multitude of the documents bear witness to the crimes committed by the Nazi-Germany and its ramifications – even for the second and third generations of those persecuted. The preservation of these documents, as well as making them accessible, is an urgent task of the ITS Archive.

Thomas Buergenthal

We must never forget that the documents on deposit in Bad Arolsen are a sacred memorial held in trust to honor the memories of the millions of victims of the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities.

Thomas Buergenthal, Survivor

Tasks

The ITS cares for the preservation of these significant documents for future generations; at the same time enabling access to these documents on an international scale for as many people as possible.

Overview of the Archival Holdings

Effects

When people were deported to concentration camps, their belongings were taken from them on arrival. The ITS is the only institution to preserve a collection of personal effects whose owners’ names are known. It strives to return these effects to the families of the victims of Nazi persecution.

Instruction the International Prisoners Committee gave to the clothing depot to immediately stop the distribution of prisoners’ garb on 14 May 1945.

Early postwar witness reports for research

In 1950, Max Galassky wrote a letter providing concise information about the Kovno ghetto and the fate of the people confined there.

Punctuality on duty

In 1941, SS-Obersturmführer Lang demanded that the staff of the department responsible for the admission to homes of the Lebensborn e.V. association be more punctual - punctuality being “the most reliable indicator of the inner attitude of those following”.

Finding stones to repair roads with frost damage

Jewish gravestones for road constructions: In a letter of 2 April, 1943 the district captain in Tarnopol was asked to allow that Jewish cemeteries be dismantled to become building material.

The ITS archives include letters written by more than 200 persons from a DP Camp near Hanover protesting against their impending repatriation in 1945.

IRO brochure

In 1948, William Hallam Tuck, the director general of the IRO, summarized the situation of the DP three years after liberation.

Kommandobuch Dachau

Nazi work areas and self-administration after 1945: This “Kommandobuch” was reused by survivors of the Dachau Concentration Camp.

Rescued from Lake Toplitz

Lists with the names of Concentration Camp prisoners employed for Operation Bernhard could be recovered from Lake Toplitz into which they had been dropped together with other pieces of evidence.

SS Surgeon Aribert Heim

A record of operations has been kept from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp: SS surgeon Aribert Heim affixed his signature to 268 surgeries of prisoners.

Commemorative Plaques for the Victims of the Death Marches

The wooden commemorative plaques made after these drawings and dedicated to the almost 600 casualties of the death march of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp are standing in the community of Wetterfeld still.

DP identity card of Adam Kohn

Various records preserved at the ITS document the suffering of Adam Kohn. He had become famous in 2010 thanks to a video showing him dancing to the song “I will survive” in front of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Shot after liberation

An investigation into the murder of a forced laborer after liberation came to the conclusion that the man probably had been killed by an SS man.

The ITS archives preserve the statutes of the “Lebensborn” association signed by its founder, the “Reichsführer SS” Heinrich Himmler.

Magda Goebbels’ Stepfather

Magda Goebbels, the wife of the Minister for Propaganda, had broken off contact with her Jewish step-father Richard Friedländer. He died as a result of the inhumane forced labor conditions he faced in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Note by Heinrich Himmler

A copy of the note handwritten by Heinrich Himmler ordering the murder of the Concentration Camp inmates is kept in the ITS archives. This instruction was transmitted to the Concentration Camps via radio.

PLEASE SUPPORT US IN OUR TASK

We document and facilitate research about the victims of National Socialism to ensure the commemoration of their suffering.